


this life is more than ordinary

by apollonian



Series: Trope Bingo Round 1 [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Body-swap, Gen, M/M, trope bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:18:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollonian/pseuds/apollonian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint gets body-swapped with Thor, and a shenanigan happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this life is more than ordinary

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Red Hot Chili Peppers song, Can't Stop.

The villain of the week is one of the most ludicrously dressed people Clint has ever seen. He’s decked out in a lab coat spattered with stains in strange colors, with bright neon paint on it proclaiming him “THE MASTER.” He’s also carrying a garish green spray gun type thing, with small yellow lettering on it that says “The Device.” He’s standing on the corner of his street, yelling something at Iron Man, who seems to be nodding off behind the impassive gold mask.

“What the hell is he supposed to be the master of, the worst dressed people?” Clint asks, taking aim with a tranquilizer. “Coulson, can I take him out yet?”

“Not yet, Hawkeye,” Coulson’s calm voice replies, laced with a hint of amusement. “Let him finish his spiel then he’s all yours.”

Clint sighs, and then rolls his eyes as the villain’s movements become more frantic. There’s a whiff of air to his right, and Thor lands silently next to him – it was quite a surprise to figure out that Thor could be quiet when he wanted or when the situation called for it. 

“How goes the fight?” Thor asks, surveying the situation below him.

“It goes really, really slowly,” Clint replies, “I’m so bored just waiting here, I wish he would just shut up, so that I can go home.”

“At least you’re not the one listening to the crap he’s spewing out, Hawkeye, so that makes your situation markedly better than mine,” Tony says. “He looks insane and he talks insane, why can’t villains understand that _style_ has to be an important factor when you plan to take over the world, it’s just—”

“No chatter on the comms, Iron Man,” Coulson interrupts. “Did he mention what the device is for yet?”

“Blah blah blah, something along the lines of putting people into each other’s shoes so that they can finally understand the hardships people like him go through, more of the same villainous rhetoric,” Tony replies. “Seriously, can Hawkeye just shoot him now?”

“Patience, Stark,” Coulson replies, then pauses. “Actually, we have confirmation now – Hawkeye, get ready to fire.”

“Yes sir,” Clint says, snapping into business mode. He lines up the mad scientist along his sight, takes a deep breath to center himself and – “I have the shot, Coulson.”

“Go fo—” Coulson never finishes the sentence, or if he does, Clint never hears him. Milliseconds before he releases his arrow, he sees the scientist take aim with his device and then there’s a bright flash of light and the world whites out.

 

* * *

 

Clint wakes up, blinking his eyes groggily. He’s in medical, of course, he recognizes the familiar, lightly patterned tiles on the ceilings. He doesn’t think anything’s broken, nothing seems to hurt. He tries to sit up – he feels unusually heavy, like he’s gained thirty pounds – but he manages it, and when he looks down to check that everything’s in place, he realizes that he is not in his own body.

He rewinds what he just thought and feels sorry that that sentence doesn’t even feel strange to him anymore. It’s just some other challenge to deal with on a random Tuesday, no less strange than the entirety of New York’s cars being turned to ice cream by Loki.

He sighs and slips out of the bed to go look at himself in the bathroom mirror. He doesn’t know quite whose body he was expecting to be in, but Thor’s face stares back at him out of the mirror, and, well, that’s a whole lot better than he’d expected. Being body-swapped with, say, a random civilian, would have been awful – and actually, he doesn’t even know if Thor’s been body-swapped with him or whether it was a multiple person swap, and that’s something he should probably go check out. Scowling at the loose hospital gown flapping around his thighs, he opens the door of the room, and runs straight into Coulson.

“Th—Barton?” Coulson asks, narrowing his eyes. 

“Um, yeah, it’s me – Barton. Could you tell me where my body is?” Clint asks quickly, cutting off whatever Coulson’s about to say, and also, wow, that sentence sounds stranger out loud than it did in his head. 

“Thor is currently occupying your body – it wasn’t a multiple body swap, thankfully. Now get back into that bed, Medical wants to check over you again,” Coulson orders, mouth quirking when Clint’s – Thor’s? – mouth scrunches in displeasure.

Grumbling under his breath, he slips back under the covers and waits for a doctor to pop in. Medical’s fine, generally – he just hates being in a room with anyone from that division whenever something strange happens, due to their unnerving tendency to check every single thing about him at least a million times, and no, Nat, that’s not exaggeration. Coulson sinks into a chair beside him, and as Dr. Reynolds (Clint actually likes him, which isn’t a surprise – he’s quick and efficient and doesn’t dally) pronounces him ready to go, he smiles and looks at Coulson, who shakes his head and says, “Debrief, first, then you can go back to Avengers Tower.”

“Fine, fine,” Clint replies. He settles back into the bed as Coulson leads him through the familiar routine of a debrief, and tries to get used to his new body. When the debrief is over, he asks, “How long is this going to last? I’m not sure I want Thor in my body for any longer than he has to be.”

“The rough estimate’s about 24 hours, and Thor says that that time span seems to be the usual for these kinds of incidents,” Coulson replies.

“The usual?” Clint narrows his eyes. “Wait, Thor’s been through this kind of stuff before?”

“Ah, yes. Apparently Loki was quite fond of playing similar pranks on him during their childhood,” Coulson answers, and now Clint really wants to know what Thor had been body-swapped into before. But before that, he needs to do one thing before this… _thing_ wears off.

“Okay, so, am I free to go now?” Clint asks, trying not to seem overly excited at the prospect.

“Yes, Barton, you are. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Coulson replies, and Clint knows he suspects something, but he won’t do anything to stop what Clint’s planning, not unless he finds out that it’s something dangerous. Clint grins, gets out of the bed and – wait, right, he needs clothes.

He turns back towards Coulson with a hopeful look and Coulson nods towards the bathroom, an amused glint in his eye. Clint nods his thanks and quickly goes to change. 

Once he’s done, he wanders down to Thor’s room to see how he’s doing. He’s mildly gobsmacked for a few seconds when he sees his own body from the outside, but he shakes it off. He's seen far stranger things through out his career with SHIELD. Thor’s reclining in his bed, regaling Nat and Steve with one of his epic stories, and he breaks off and looks up when Clint enters, smiling. 

“Hi, Thor, Cap, Nat. Thor, please take good care of my body, and I need to borrow Nat for a while,” Clint says, beckoning Natasha over.

“O…kay,” Natasha says, but comes along, as he had known she would. “See you guys later!” he yells back to Thor and Steve, both with matching, bemused expressions on their faces.

 

* * *

 

 

“ _What_ did you say to her?” Coulson asks, brow furrowed. 

Clint grins unrepentantly, and in Thor’s biggest, best booming voice, says, “I WISH TO DEVOUR THE UNBORN!”

Coulson rolls his eyes and rubs his forehead. “What happened next?”

“Well, Natasha almost broke my neck for ‘being an idiot,’ her words, sir, and then the entire Denny’s became so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. That’s when the girl behind the counter dropped the shocked look and started laughing, sir,” Clint summarizes, still grinning.

He’d wanted to do that for ages, ever since he’d seen it on one of those popular websites, and being body-swapped with Thor and gaining his glorious voice was the best opportunity he could have dreamt of. Of course he took it and jumped, and the end result was as fantastic as he could have imagined. He grins again, just thinking about the shocked faces and dropped forks, and wonders what else he can do while in Thor’s body.

“Did you get your meal, then?” Coulson asks, breaking into his thoughts. "What _were_ you asking for anyway?"

“Yes, sir” Clint replies, and adds, “It was eggs, I was asking for eggs. No one was hurt either, sir, expect maybe Natasha, due to the embarrassment of knowing me.”

Coulson’s mouth quirks at that and he says, “That will be all, then, Agent Barton. For the sake of all our sanities, however, I hope that you are returned to your rightful body as soon as possible.”

Clint laughs, and doesn’t miss the way Coulson’s smile deepens slightly at the sound. He flashes a smile, and starts to exit, when Coulson’s voice stops him again.

“And Barton – when you’re back in your body, I’m taking you out for lunch at a proper restaurant.”

Clint almost trips in his shock, but regains his balance in the nick of time. He shoots a thumbs-up at Coulson, winks, and walks out the door, wide grin back on his face. Today’s shaping up to be a great, great day.

**Author's Note:**

> For the body-swap block on my trope bingo card, which I'm racing to finish before the amnesty period ends. The "I wish to devour the unborn" line is from a tumblr post (of course), and Loki turning all of New York's cars to ice-cream did happen once in a comic (although I have no idea which one).


End file.
